The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of private households, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin. Every year, there were nearly 11,000 households, and more than 20,000 persons sampled by the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung.
The data provide information on all household members, consisting of Germans living in the Old and New German States, Foreigners, and recent Immigrants to Germany. The Panel was started in 1984.
Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health and satisfaction indicators.

The FDZ-DZA (Forschungsdatenzentrum DZA) is a facility of the German Centre of Gerontology (Deutsches Zentrum für Altersfragen, DZA) and has received accreditation as research data center DZA by the German Data Forum (RatSWD). Its main task is to make data of the German Ageing Survey DEAS and the German Survey on Volunteering (FWS) accessible to researchers by providing user-friendly Scientific Use Files (SUF), documentation of the contents and instruments as well support for scholars using the data.

The project analyzes educational processes in Germany from early childhood to late adulthood. The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) has been set up to find out more about the acquisition of education in Germany, to plot the consequences of education for individual biographies, and to describe central educational processes and trajectories across the entire life span.
Such an interdisciplinary consortium of research institutes, researcher groups, and research.
personalities has been assembled in Bamberg. In addition, the competencies and experiences with longitudinal research available at numerous other locations have been networked to form a cluster of excellence.

The Economics & Business Data Center (EBDC) is a combined platform for empirical research in business administration and economics of the Ludwig–Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and the Ifo Institute and aims at opening new fields for empirical research in business administration and economics.
In this regard, the EBDC provides innovative datasets of German companies, containing both survey data of the Ifo Institute as well as external balance sheet data. Therefore, the tasks of the EBDC also include the procurement and administration of data sources for research and teaching, the central provision, updating and documentation of external databases, as well as the acquisition of corresponding support tools.
Beyond that, the EBDC serves as a contact and central coordinator on licensing economic firm-level datasets for LMU’s Munich School of Management and LMU’s Department of Economics and supports researchers and guests of the LMU and the Ifo Institute on site. In the future, it will also conduct academic conferences on research with company data.

Forschungsdatenzentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung (fdz.DZHW) provides data on quantitative and qualitative surveys of the DZHW. In addition, prepared DZHW-external data from the research field are archived and provided for secondary use. For scientific purposes, Scientific Use Files, for academic purposes,Campus Use Files are offered. The documentation is available in German and for the most part in English.

The Research Data Centre Education is a focal point for empirical educational research regarding the archiving and retrieval of audiovisual research data (AV) data and survey instruments (questionnaires and tests). In Research Data Centre Education relevant for empirical educational research data sets and tools for secondary use are provided conform with data protection via a central data repository. Contextual information for each origin study and data and instruments as well as related publications complete the offer. Content of Research Data Centre Education formation (so far) focuses on instruments and data sets of Schulqualitäts- and teaching quality research. Observation and interview data in the form of (anonymous) transcripts and codes - be viewed freely accessible - if any. The release of the original AV data for a scientific re-use is linked to a registration by specifying a reasoned research interest in order to protect the privacy rights of the observed or interviewed people.

The ZEW research data can be analysed here at ZEW in the ZEW-FDZ premises for research projects. The data provided is individual company data. Besides, the ZEW Financial Market Test provides data collected in the course of an expert survey. Furthermore, Scientific Use Files for eight data sets (three years after the implementation of the survey) and absolute anonymised Education Use Files for the Mannheim Innovation Panel can be used.

The RDSC provides researchers access to selected microdata from the Bundesbank's data records for independent and non-commercial scientific research projects on basis of the legal requirements. The RDSC is the mediator between the Bundesbank’s wide range of different micro data in various departments and – on the other side – researchers or analysts. In connection with this, the RDSC is responsible for the methodological improvement, the access of and the comprehensive documentation of the high-quality microdata. It also offers additional consultancy and support services to existing and prospective data users and satisfies data protection requirements.

BIBB has a strong tradition of survey-based research. It initiates and realises the collection of individual and firm-level data on crucial positions and transitions in the education and labour market system. The BIBB-FDZ covers a variety of data deploying different units of analysis and temporal designs and focusing on various thematic issues. Standard access to well prepared firm- and individual-level data on the attainment and utilization of vocational education and training
Documentation of these data sets, i.e. a description of their central characteristics, main issues and variables, data collection, anonymisation, weighting and recoding etc.
Advisory service on data choice, data access and handling, research potential and scope and validity of the data.
Supply of a range of data tools such as standard measures and classifications in the fields of education, occupations, industries and regions (if possible also including cross-national fields), formally anonymous data for remote data access, or references to publications with the data.

The Research Data Center (RDC) “International Survey Programs“ provides researchers with data, services, and consultation on a number of important international study series which are under intensive curation by GESIS. They all cover numerous countries and, quite often, substantial time spans. The RDC provides optimal data preparation and access to a wide scope of data and topics for comparative analysis.

The German Youth Institute is a leading non-university research institute. Since 1988, empirical studies about the growing up of children and young people and to life situations of adults and families were regularly conducted. The Research Data Centre is part of the department "Social Monitoring." It processes the data and provides data access for secondary analysis.

IDSC is IZA's organizational unit whose purpose is to serve the scientific and infrastructural computing needs of IZA and its affiliated communities.
IDSC is dedicated to supporting all users of data from the novice researcher to the experienced data analyst.
IDSC aims at becoming the place for economically minded technologists and technologically savvy economists looking for data support, data access support and data services about labor economics.
IDSC is actively involved in organizing events (see our next Red Cube Seminar Talk) for data professionals, data analysts, and scientific data users and young researchers to discuss and share findings and to establish contacts for future cooperation.

Currently, micro-data on research and development activities (R & D) can be used in the German economy, which is collected on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Core indicators are the internal and external R & D expenditures of enterprises by use of funds and source of funding, R & D personnel by type of activity and sex, the regional distribution of research institutions, the business innovation and economic indicators. Some time series are available from the year 1979.
For all odd report annual data are available for all largely within Germany R & D-active companies. In even years under review a representative sample of research companies is questioned. The data are broken down by industry, region, company size and other characteristics evaluated. The survey is part of the official EU Community Statistics, and is incorporated into national and international reporting systems.

The Research Data Centre (FDZ-RV) was set-up in 2004 as an integral part of the German Federal Pension Insurance (Deutsche Rentenversicherung). Since then, the Research Data Centre produced several cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets, also called Scientific Use Files (SUF), available to researchers interested in issues of retirement, disability and rehabilitation. The datasets are released on an annual basis.
The Scientific Use Files are subsamples drawn from the pool of individuals who are insured in the Federal Pension Insurance. The information provided in the original datasets is necessary to administer the beneficiaries of the pension insurance.

The Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is intended mainly to facilitate access to BA and IAB micro data for non-commercial empirical research using standardised and transparent access rules. The FDZ mediates between data producers and external users. We also control for compliance with data protection regulations.

The Research Data Center Elections is part of GESIS and provides access to a number of national survey datasets. The RDC performs the main tasks: Data collection, Consultation and creation of value-added services like data handbooks, Knowledge transfer, e.g. organisation of workshops and Scientific research.

Goal of the psychology data archive PsychData is the documentation and long-term archiving of research data from all areas of psychology and the social sciences, using specially created metadata and to provide use of the data for scientific purposes such as secondary analysis and reanalysis. Psychdata contains all areas of psychology, in particular data sets from clinical, developmental, educational, gero-, and work and organizational psychology stemming from longitudinal studies, major surveys, and test development.

The Research Data Centre PIAAC grants scientifically interested users access to the German and international data of the Programme for the Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
The first wave of PIAAC was conducted in 2011 and 2012, initiated by the OECD. The survey was based on a representative population sample. First, a computer assisted interview was conducted, which was followed by a competency assessment, usually performed on the computer.

The Data Service Centre at the University of Bielefeld is a central archive for quantitative and qualitative data that relate to organizations. In addition to data on businesses and organizations, this includes linked employer-employee data as well as data from member or employee surveys. The organizational units can be establishments and businesses, but also public associations, kindergartens, schools, or public health facilities. The DSC-BO co-ordinates the data circulation and provides the facility of getting access to data sets and transcripts for secondary use regarding to scientific purposes on the base of contracts with the data producers.

The GML contributes to the continual improvement of access to and information about official microdata; provides a service and research infrastructure for these data; adopts the function of an intermediary between the Federal Statistical Office and empirical research; conducts exemplary research based upon official data. The GML is an integral part of the German data infrastructure and features as one of six institutions funded by the German Council of Social and Economic Data.

The basic goal of the research data centres of the statistical offices of the Federation and the Länder is to improve the accessibility and usability of microdata of official statistics by setting up various ways of using the data.
Research data centres of the Federal Statistical Office (FDZ-Bund) and the statistical offices of the Länder (FDZ-Länder) provide collectively access to selected microdata of official statistics to researchers for scientific purposes.

The Research Data Center (RDC) of the Collaborative Research Center 882 "From heterogeneities to inequalities" at Bielefeld University provides external scientists access to the research data generated in the CRC 882. It provides access to both qualitative and quantitative data from the field of inequality research. The CRC 882 RDC supports external researchers who are reusing the data, as well as gives advice on data documentation and anonymization procedures to the researchers of the CRC to ensure high data quality.
The datasets include, for example, a panel on youth crime, different series of interviews on ethnicity, paternal life and recalls of employees, as well as other panels, interview data and experimental data. In the further course of the Collaborative Research Center the database will be expanded with the data of future projects. External scientists can make an application for the scientific use of CRC 882 Research Data. In accordance with data privacy requirements, the access will be organized via controlled remote data access or via on-site use. For this purpose, the RDC provides workplaces for guest researchers.

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of more than 85,000 individuals (approximately 150,000 interviews) from 19 European countries (+Israel) aged 50 or over.

As a center for scientific research and evidence-based policy advice, RWI requires an effective econometric infrastructure. The increased use of individual and firm data also requires effective regulations and tools for data protection. The research division’s objectives are to advise RWI researchers in methodical questions, to develop new econometric approaches to solve concrete research questions, and to ensure data protection.